


Under Pressure

by Wandering_Moose



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Light Relationship Fluff, Mortiis' Backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 12:59:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5249111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wandering_Moose/pseuds/Wandering_Moose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...so how did Mortiis die anyway? Well, here's how it all went down...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under Pressure

Life is fleeting. That's the first existential crisis that anyone will ever have, they realize their own mortality and spend a day or two moping over it. You could die crossing the street, eating your lunch, even sleeping. When a person first realizes that they can and most definitely will die, it's a crisis for them as much as it is watching others suffer over it. Eventually you grow and learn from the experience, but the little thought about it is always in the back of your head. Just barely there, but you can still think about how death could take you whenever you want.

_'This could kill me!'_

_'This could all go wrong and I could be maimed or killed by my own friends...'_

_'I could just take this pen and jam it through my eye into my frontal lobe.'_

_'What if I were to just jump off of this roof...'_

Mortiis himself was no stranger to intrusive thoughts like those. Of course, he was already dead, so it wasn't much of a stretch to think about. Although his way of dying was far less common than you would have thought it to be, he still thought back about it. On rainy nights spent stalking Alliance members out in Darkmoor, or on sunny days he spent in Durotar, just to relax from all of the work he did. Work, of course, fluctuated to cover everything he did during the day. Murder, hunting, bringing twenty bear asses to a Shaman, you name it.

He was proud to say that no matter what he did, he did a good job. In his own mind, anyway. He tried with what he was given, and didn't always come out on top, but he did give it his all. He made friends along the way too, although they were truly few and far in between. His friends always seemed to be far apart too, but he was a drifter by nature, he always seemed to find them. All he had was the things he could fit in his bags, and that was fine by him. Besides, he was Forsaken anyway, who would ever want him to stay?

Well, maybe one or two of the people he had met along the road. Maybe the troll he had met in Durotar or the Blood Elf who he had met in Undercity. Maybe, but he wasn't going to ask. He was dead, and he was pissed, he didn't have time for bothering his friends like that.

His stance on not bothering friends had probably caused him to look like a fool when he met the Blood Elf. Her name was Ileen, and he had met her while he was swimming in Undercity's vast canals of embalming fluid. She yelled “Bald!” and he laughed. It was the start of a lovely friendship, if he did say so himself. She said bald a lot to him, and he may have pretended to be irritated, but he was smiling internally. He didn't mind the teasing. Besides, he teased her about her large ears anyway, it was tit for tat.

They had been sitting near the King's Tomb, wondering what to do next. She asked him how he died, as she healed her Voidwalker. The question had caught him off guard. He thought about it an awful lot, but it was exceedingly rare for another being to ask him about it. Almost like how nobody ever really asks an amputee about how they lost a limb. Not necessarily lacking a social grace, but it still was taboo in some circles and to some people.

The way he had explained it, it was like his tongue was tied in a knot. He hadn't ever thought about putting it into words. He had stuttered, and explained like he was telling a tale and not a true story. He had sounded like a fool in front of Ileen.

Truth be told, he had left a lot out while he told her. He just hadn't been able to explain it all. He remembered it all, in explicit detail, but he couldn't make his mouth form the right words to relay what he wanted to say.

He had been a young man, fresh out training to be a guard. He couldn't remember what his name was when he was alive- knowing what he could remember of his mother, it was probably something like Bob or Craig. One of those ridiculous placeholder names that people use in their hypothetical scenarios. He had lived just out of Stormwind, it was about a 15 minute walk to the city. He had loved being on the docks, the smell of saltwater in the air and all the new travelers coming off of ships.

He would lift crates, run to deliver messages to the ship crews, load 42lb cannonballs into ship canons, whatever was required of him. He was a happy camper as long as he had something to do. On his lunch breaks, he would sit on a crate and watch people come and go. He loved watching people, he was abjectly fascinated by the way they would interact. He always had trouble with socializing, he didn't understand why certain trivialities were required, really. Shaking hands, maintaining eye contact, small talk, all of it seemed like a forced pleasantry. Hardly a necessary thing to do in his eyes.

In his off time, he would do experiments for the mages within the city. His favourite job that a mage had given him was to test a unique suit of armor. The armor had been enchanted to allow the wearer to breath under water, if only for a limited amount of time. To test the armor, he would go diving in the harbor. He could come back up with clams, seashells, coral, all kinds of underwater majesties. The wizard was more than pleased with how the suit worked, and allowed him to come and borrow the suit when he could.

He had made money selling the underwater trinkets to merchants, or trading them with passerby. He saved up his gold, he wasn't sure for what, but he would have enough to buy something important when the time came. If the time came, anyway. He wasn't even sure if he would have a use for the 2 gold he had managed to make selling shells and underwater baubles. It could never hurt to have money saved up though, he had supposed.

The day after finally saving up his 2nd gold piece, he went back to work. A man without a purpose was a man without drive to live, as his mother had put it. He had just carried a crate of dried meat onto a ship when he saw _her._

He hadn't ever believed in love at first site until that moment.

She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. A Tauren, standing at 9'2. She wore a set of leather armor, and carried a simple staff. Her fur was brown, but slowly spotted down to white on her torso and arms. She had braided her hair, and had let them hang down on the sides of her head. Her eyes were a radiant blue, and her smile warmed his heart. He wasn't sure how a Horde member had come to the Stormwind harbor, but he sure as hell wasn't about to tell her to leave. In fact, he hoped she stuck around.

He had to admit, in hindsight, his sudden fixation seemed quite creepy, at least in the present. Instantaneously becoming infatuated seemed like a very creepy move on his part, but many other people had probably acted the same way with different people in both the past and present. He hoped. If not, then this was a significant first, if not, thank god.

He had continued coming into work, and every time he walked into the harbor he could see her there, reclining on the dock railing. Sometimes she would cast healing spells on workers with bad backs or knees, sometimes she would help someone carry a heavy load, other times she would just sit and watch, occasionally turning to talk to a nearby sailor or guard.

The most nerve wracking day for him was when he had to carry a crate of cannonballs onto a ship bound for The Exodar. As he got closer, crate in his arms, he realized that her formidable height was even more so up close. To say she towered over him was an understatement. She was at least three feet taller than he was, and he felt like a Gnome walking past her. He hobbled down the dock with the crate, and set it where the captain asked, and as he walked past her again he could hear her giggling. It was so quiet, he probably wouldn't have heard if he hadn't been paying attention that time around.

He had turned around, and found her staring very obviously at him. He had asked if she needed something, she had replied with a voice as sweet as fresh honey, a voice as refreshing as morning dew on dry grass. He had lost his train of thought, and couldn't reply. She had giggled, her laughter as beautiful as the sun shining through stained glass.

It continued on with them having small conversations like that for days, their small tidbits of conversations turning into flirtatious exchanges, which were very clearly welcomed by both parties. He didn't want to toot his own horn (although he did want to toot hers) he thought that they were both getting on incredibly well. He wanted to take her out to Westfall, to see the rolling plains and clear skies, but to do that he'd at least need a horse. A fast and strong one, that could withstand the both of them on it. That would be an immense stretch, though. A horse could probably hold either him or her, but maybe not both. Well, if it came to that, he would walk and she could take the horse.

After had left work during a particularly windy and cloudy evening, he walked all the way out to the Eastvale Logging Camp to purchase a sturdy Pinto Horse. He rode it home for the night, and he was incredibly impressed by the horse's sturdiness. It held up very well for a relatively young horse. He had been about to hitch his horse out in front of his home, when he remembered that he had promised to pick up a package from a tailor for his mother. He had used some of his money to get her a dress for Mother's Day, which was coming up soon.

He hoped she would like the dress. He had paid for a red dress made of sturdy cloth, her favourite colour, and a material that could withstand being outside for extended periods of time.

He spurred his horse, and turned it back towards Stormwind. It had begun to rain, but he paid it no mind at the time. A little water never hurt anyone. Except maybe fire elementals. He rode into Stormwind, and rode through the Trading District until he came to the tailor's shop. He saw his package on the desk, and was about to pick it up when he heard some yelling coming from an alleyway nearby. It sounded like a serious scuffle. He grabbed the box with his mother's dress in it, and walked back out of the shop.

He set the box underneath a waterproofed cloak on his horse's back. He couldn't just let something like this happen, he had to at least see what was going on. There could have been a child involved, or something like that. He'd never forgive himself if he let a kid get hurt. Even though he hated kids, he still had paternal instinct. It was significantly odd. But, he digressed, now was not the time to think about this.

He turned into the alleyway next to the tailor's shop, and noticed a dagger that was driven into the wall of the shop. He reached and pulled it out of the wall. You never know when you might need something sharp and stabby. Besides, for all he knew, he could get jumped by an addict in the alley or something.

He slowly rounded the corner, and he saw something that he truly wasn't expecting. A large Worgen (who was transformed at the time) was standing with his hand raised, a mace clenched in his furry fist. The Worgen was yelling, and swinging the mace at a figure lying on the ground.

It wasn't until the figure yelled back at the Worgen that Mortiis realized just who it had been lying on the ground in that filthy alleyway.

It was her.

He didn't know what had come over him at that moment, but he lunged at the Worgen. He screamed, and plunged his dagger into the Worgen's back. He left the dagger in, and clawed at the Worgen. He swung, clawed, and ripped at the Worgen's back. With every swing, he could feel fur coming out of the Worgen's back, he could feel blood coating his hands and forearms, and deep down he _loved_ it. He certainly wouldn't be admitting it any time though.

He didn't stop until he felt a firm and soft hand on his shoulder. The Worgen had fallen a while ago, he just hadn't noticed. At all. His system was still flooded with adrenaline and he was breathing heavily, but he turned to the owner of the hand on his shoulder.

“Sorry, I...I- uh-”

She had shushed him, she had thanked him, even embraced him. It was a very conflicting experience, really. Holding someone close while there's a dead body not a foot away isn't something that he normally would have done, but there he was, and doing just that. He felt like both a monster and a hero at that moment.

The wheels in his head started turning at that precise moment. Worgen were widely accepted in the Alliance, she was a Tauren, one of the spiritualists of the Horde. This would most definitely not end well if either of them were caught near the body. Or in the city, or with anything even remotely resembling evidence for that matter. She would be killed, he would probably be killed too...this was not good. Most definitely not good at all.

He gently leaned back and looked up into her eyes, although the rain made it rather hard to look up and keep his eyes open.

“Take my horse, it's the Pinto out front of the shop. There is a box on the horse, take that box to Marian, in Goldshire. Explain what's happened, and she will help you.”

“But what about you?”

“I'm going to face the music.” This was a bad decision, but it was better him than her. The guards would arrest someone, and he'd rather it was him than either her or an innocent person.

“But-”  
  
“They'll hurt you. I don't want that.”

Determination sparked in his eyes, and she looked down at him with the saddest expression he had ever seen on another living being. At least she'd be alive, but sad and not dead. She had a whole life ahead of her (well, he did too, but that didn't matter to him at that moment in time), and he'd be damned if the Stormwind Guard were going to arrest her and take that from her.

“Go. Don't stay long enough for anyone to find you near me or him.” He gestured at the fallen Worgen, who's blood pool had spread over the alley and was currently soaking into his shoes.

“I won't forget this.”

She bent down and kissed him before turning and running back to his horse.

He thanked God that it was raining, because he didn't want her to realize that he had been crying. He wasn't supposed to cry, dammit, he was a man. Men didn't cry, or at least that's what he had been taught. He didn't want to have to do this, but he did commit the crime, so he was going to have to do the time. He felt jealous of people who didn't have morals, people who could just walk away and not feel some sense of responsibility and guilt for it. He didn't want any of this.

He did, however, want his mother. He felt alone and scared, usually moms were supposed to help with stuff like that. They were supposed to be there with open arms and shoulders to cry on. He didn't have that luxury right now. He was alone in a dark and rainy alley with a corpse. How lovely. He walked over and sat on a tipped barrel next to the body, and waited for the sun to rise. He didn't have anything else to do, other than wait. The sun would rise, and the morning patrols would come, as surely as the church bells would ring at a wedding.

He waited all through the night, and as he sat on that barrel, soaked to the bone and with his arms caked in blood, the sun rose. It shined a light on the scene he had created last night, and he regretted looking down at the Worgen's body. It looked like the Worgen had been mauled by an animal, with all those scratches and deep cuts on his body. If not for the dagger embedded in his spine and the fact that he was in a city alleyway, the Worgen might have looked like the victim of an animal attack.

He didn't react as a passing woman screamed when she spotted the run through corpse. He didn't attempt to defend himself as the guards came for him. He didn't react as his friends who had been in training with him carted him off the the dungeons of Stormwind Castle. He didn't speak up when the Captain asked if he wanted to defend himself. He only spoke up when the Captain asked him why he had done it.

“He...He tried to take something very important away from me.”

The Captain looked so incredibly disappointed. The same Captain had trained him to become a guard, but now all that ambition had clearly gone down the drain.

“Son...you're in for a world of hurt.” The Captain had left shortly afterwards, and Mortiis had been alone in an empty place once again.

The guards had beat him after the Captain left, they had struck him with their metal gauntlets on, until his skin was spongy, bruised, and turning purple. It wouldn't have been that bad, until he realized that they weren't just doing it for fun.

He realized that as they were dragging him down a hall that led to the interrogator's “office”. They threw him into a metal chair, and shackled his limbs to the cold steel of the chair.

“I confessed. Is there a reason that I'm here?” He looked around, and was not surprised to have his head smacked back into it's original direction. He could feel something trickling down his face, the guard must have broken the skin on his cheek.

“Your punishment.” A raspy voice replied. He could hear multiple sets of footsteps, but he couldn't put them to a face or anything. That voice didn't sound familiar either.

A group of people slowly walked into his field of vision. A mage, the Captain of the Guard, a herbalist, and what appeared to be a Draenei Shaman. What a curious ragtag bunch of torture technicians. Or at least that was what Mortiis assumed they were there to do.

The Captain dropped a bag on the metal table that sat in the middle of the room, and removed several items from it that Mortiis couldn't quite make out. They all looked metal, but he couldn't have been sure at the time.

The Captain pushed the table itself closet to Mortiis, so that the cold edge of the table was poking him in the stomach. The items set in the table were, in order from left to right, a metal plate, some sort of Dwarven contraption that looked like a small generator, and a...a fork. A fucking fork.

The Captain moved to stand next to Mortiis, and stopped when he was uncomfortably close. Mortiis could feel the Captain's breath on the top of his head.

“Your breath smells like Ale. Isn't that a little unethical for you to-”

Mortiis wasn't surprised that the Captain had slammed his head down into the table for that.

“Silence, prisoner. You have committed a great crime against the people of Stormwind, now you can pay the court a fine or serve your time.”

He didn't like the fact that the Captain sounded like he was sneering. There had to be a catch here.

“Okay, the fine then?”

“Very well, you will pay the court with your life.”

He didn't know what he had expected. The Captain moved to grab the metal plate, which had turned bright red, like someone had stuck it into a forge and heated it. He could see the steam rising off of the plate as the Captain brought it closer to him. He tried to struggle and flinch away, but his shackles held him in place as the plate got closer and closer to his face.

He turned his head away as far as he possibly could have. The Shaman reached down and grabbed his head, and pushed it back downwards towards the plate. The Shaman reached down with his other hand, and pried Mortiis' top and bottom eyelids apart. Mortiis struggled against his bonds and thrashed with all of his might, but to no avail.

The shaman pressed his face down just above the hot plate. He could feel the heat radiating from it, and he could feel sweat forming on his skin where the steam was hitting his face.

“Abacination. Burning of the eyes with a hot metal plate.” The Shaman's voice echoed in his ears, and he could feel the Shaman's grip on his head tighten.

His eye was forced down upon the burning plate.

He screamed.

He screamed for as long as he could bear it, he screamed until his voice wanted to give out. He screamed until he could taste blood, until his throat was red and raw.

The pain was unimaginable, as if someone had taken a grill to his eye and surrounding facial bits. It burned, it throbbed, it stung, and he could feel the pain shooting through his entire head, through the ocular nerves and into his brain, down his neck and into his spine. He wanted to die, he wanted to drop dead in his chair. All of his nerves were on fire, and he had no water to put them out. His entire body ached and burned, his head felt like it was fit to burst.

He writhed and groaned in his chair, but the Shaman and Captain held steady and kept his eye on the plate.

“Here comes the best part!” He couldn't tell if that was abundant glee or smug satisfaction in the Captain's voice.

The Shaman wrenched his head off of the plate, and it stung so badly he felt as if he could have passed out right then and there.

“Look with your one special eye, check out the plate.”

He looked down, and saw a large chunk of his own eye stuck on the metal plate. The Captain reached over and plucked the eyeball half off of the plate with the wooden fork.

“Say, you sat there all night right? You must be hungry.”

The Shaman pulled his mouth open.

Mortiis refused to close it until the Shaman closed it for him. The eye was right on his tongue, it was like a piece of fat form a steak, firm yet soft. He wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of swallowing it.

“So, is this as peachy keen as you figured prison would be?” the Captain leaned down to gloat right in Mortiis' face.

He spat out the eye, and nailed the Captain in one of his eyes. Irony. Eye-rony.

The eye slowly slid down the Captain's face, and landed on the table with a tiny wet squish noise.

“You insolent worm! I was going to let you keep the other eye, but I think you just lost that privilege.” the Captain spat into Mortiis' mutilated eye socket.

Thankfully, he passed out the moment they pressed the plate into the other eye.

Although, when he awoke, he wasn't truly sure if it was good or bad that he had passed out. He was wearing a suit of armor, and he immediately recognized that it was the armor suit that he had worn so often to dive in. Although he couldn't see a damn thing, he knew the feel of the material by heart.

“I recall you enjoyed diving, one of my boys watched you dive into the ocean for shells often.” the Captain sounded so far away as he said that.

Mortiis had felt like he was rocking back and forth. Why was he swaying?

“Have fun with one last dive.”

Oh no.  
  
He felt someone kick him off of either a dock or a boat, and it wasn't long before he was underwater. He couldn't hear anything other than the water. It didn't take long for his panicking to start, and he tried to swim up, but his arms and legs were bound in the suit. He was a living, breathing statue that was probably rapidly sinking to the bottom of the ocean. He couldn't even see where he was going to die.

It, coincidentally, also didn't take long for the waterproofing enchantment to wear off. The waterproofing part didn't really matter, but the fact that the waterproofing enchantment also allowed the diver to survive the pressure underwater did. That was going to wear off very soon, and it was not going to be fun. He could feel himself beginning to hyperventilate. This was going to be terrible.

As soon as that enchantment wore off, he could feel the pressure in the suit rapidly rising. It was like being inside a sleeping bag that was being vacuum sealed at a rapid pace. The pressure came with pain, a splitting headache spread through his body, and he felt like everything in him was being squished underneath an enormous steamroller. He could hear things popping, and he could only pray that it wasn't him that was popping. His stomach gurgled, his bones were cracking, and his airways were closing rapidly. He was writhing within the suit, fighting to get out and take one last breath.

The last thing he saw was a sudden flash of vision, and red visceral chunks and paste coating the inside of the helmet.

 

As Mortiis reclined against a tree in Brill, he figured that telling Ileen all the details of his death was a bad idea. He would rather look a fool than scar her for life.

**Author's Note:**

> I play on a private WoW server and I have a level 100 Undead Rogue named Mortiis. He was the first WoW character I ever made, and he holds a special place in my heart. This his story- or at least it's his story before he became Forsaken. Also, Ileen is my friend's level 50 Blood Elf Warlock who was sadly lost during a server wide glitch. We would level them together. And one last thing: the Tauren lady is Adira, a druid. Just so you know.


End file.
